Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium

General

Magritte Museum: the world's largest collection of works by the Belgian surrealist • Fin-de-Siècle Museum: Ensor, Khnopff, Spilliaert and all the atmosphere of Brussels in the late 1900's • Old Masters Museum: 15th to 18th-century masterpieces by Bruegel, Rubens, David, etc. • Modern Museum (curators' choice): a hand-picked selection of the finest 20th and 21st-century works.

Pieter Bruegel’s masterpieces may be known worldwide, but they contain innumerable little details with their own mysteries. Both in situ at the exhibition and online, this project offers an opportunity to immerse yourself in Bruegel’s paintings, exploring them and learning what the experts have discovered. As we approach the 450th anniversary of the painter’s death in 1569, a number of international museums have collaborated on this innovative approach.

Magritte's work constitutes a crucial reference for any artist who intends to reflect on the very production of an image, on the representation or transposition of something real as a likeness. This exhibition will bring together artists who, since the 1980s, have productively entered into dialogue with Magritte’s ‘vache’ period. From George Condo to Gavin Turk, from Sean Landers to David Altmejd.
Since his death in 1967, Magritte has never ceased to be alive and is still alive. The exhibition in the RMFAB will show this by focusing on the dialogue that Marcel Broodthaers started with Magritte’s work in 1964. The influence of the ‘word-paintings’ (1927-1929) was decisive both in Belgium and the United States, and contributed to the emergence of Conceptualism. Broodthaers' huge debt to Magritte was based on a common interest in Mallarmé.
Broodthaers befriended Magritte at the end of the war. It developed at a time when Magritte intended to redefine Surrealism by placing it in full sunlight and from a driving desire that would mark his Renoir period. This period ended ‘naturally’ with the series of works described as ‘vache’, and exhibited in 1948 in Paris. This trashing of painting by painting itself in an exuberant gesture marked and still marks much of contemporary creation. Far from the search for critical knowledge that was at the heart of the Magritte-Broodthaers relation, the aim here is to re-establish the importance of the subject, if only in an ironic way.

Lecomte, a man of letters in the full meaning of the term, was part of the first Surrealists circle in Belgium and helped Magritte coming into its own. He also built up a great complicity with Broodthaers who immortalised him in the picture of his death not long before he passed away. From 1961 to 1966, Lecomte was called upon to work for the documentation service of the Royal Museum of Fine Arts of Belgium

Following the exhibition "Magritte, Broodthaers and contemporary art", the MRBABs propose a journey in the heart of the Magritte Museum recounting the influence of Magritte on current artists. This exhibition "Magritte and the current art" takes place in the collections of the Magritte Museum.